One last twist in Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s bankruptcy case may help create clean energy firms in California.

When the utility emerged from bankruptcy court last year, it agreed to spend $30 million to establish an investment fund that would nurture young companies focused on clean-energy technology. Their products could include ways to tap renewable energy, improve power storage or boost efficiency.

The investment fund now has a name -- the California Clean Energy Fund -- a nine-member board and a president. Today, the fund will announce that it has teamed with three Silicon Valley venture capital firms to search for promising startups.

"We want to help California do what it does best, which is to innovate," said Lisa Bicker, the fund's president and, so far, sole employee. "We want to serve as a catalyst in the very broad area of clean technology."

The fund won't hand out grants. It expects its investments to make money. The proceeds, however, will be plowed back into the fund, which will operate as a nonprofit entity. Bicker hopes it will serve as a model and spur investment in a small but important field.

"We can send a signal that it's not only safe but lucrative to follow our lead," she said.

Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Nth Power also will match each dollar invested with money from their own funds.

VantagePoint won't, but the fund will become a limited partner with the firm, which already has a clean technology group. VantagePoint will pour its own money into those firms as well, typically investing $30 million to $50 million, said managing director Stephan Dolezalek.

In addition, VantagePoint will look for companies that already have products ready to market.

"Our focus is not so much on, 'Can we find the latest, greatest technology?' " said Dolezalek, co-head of VantagePoint's clean technology group. "It's, 'Is the technology developed enough that it can be deployed?' "

Although PG&E provided the clean energy fund's seed money, it no longer has any control over the fund, Bicker said. The $30 million, which will be distributed over five years, is drawn from the utility's shareholder money and not from utility bills, she said.

PG&E did, however, pick three of the fund's board members, while the California Public Utilities Commission picked another three. That initial group of six then chose the board's last three members.

The resulting board mixes financiers with academics and government regulators. Michael Peevey, the PUC president, serves as the board chairman.

Preventing conflicts

The fund's structure, in which investment decisions are made by the venture capital firms, should prevent conflicts of interest in case any of the companies financed by the fund ever appears before the utilities commission in a regulatory hearing, Bicker and Peevey said.

The utilities commission has made energy efficiency a high priority and recently hosted a day-long discussion of ways to fight climate change. Peevey said funding companies that address those issues could help build a new local tech industry.

"It's all about investing here in new companies that are in the long-term interest of the area," he said. "It's only a plus for California."